Shanta Gold PLC (LON:SHG) has provided investors with a pair of updates which together bolster the New Luika gold mine, where production and exploration activities are ongoing.
The AIM-quoted gold firm has confirmed it has total group-wide mining reserves of 653,000 ounces plus 3.2mln ounces of total resources. Shanta noted that this marks as its highest ever reserves and resources and that the company has a proven track record of delivering low-cost programmes to replace mined ounces.
It comes a week after Shanta reported interim revenue of US$73mln on 42,383 ounces of production in the first half of 2020.
READ: Shanta Gold books significant revenue increase
Meanwhile, in a separate update, Shanta said the ongoing 2020 exploration drilling programme at New Luika has loaded some 75,000 ounces of new gold resources into the inventory.
“The company is two-thirds of the way through the 2020 exploration budget of US$5mln and, so far, reserves have increased by 75,000 ounces,” chief executive Eric Zurrin said in the statement. “The increase came predominantly from Luika and Black Tree Hill deposits where reserve grades were significantly higher than the inferred resource grade"
Shanta noted that its programme has to date comprised 12 diamond core holes drilled in the Luika deposit with a total of 4,066 metres and 18 reverse circulation holes at Black Tree amounting to 2,567 metres. The results were described as “encouraging”.
Highlighted results from Luika included grades of up to 6.65 grams per tonne (g/t) gold over 5.34 metres and 6.59 g/t over 6.06 metres, 5.5 g/t over 8.12 metres.
At Black Tree, the highlighted result included grades up to 6.64 g/t over 3 metres and 5.2 g/t over 4 metres.
Shanta noted that all the holes are outside the existing mineral reserves and the results will be incorporated into the mine plan.
Zurrin pointed out: “The positive results of this Phase 1 drilling have contributed to the replacement of mined ounces and an overall increase to our JORC reserves which has also been announced today. The New Luika Gold Mine consists of 7 known deposits which all have the potential to increase in size.
“High-grade mineralisation remains open at depth at Luika underground and will be targeted by phase 2 of the drilling campaign while diamond drilling at depth is being planned for Black Tree Hill."